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Re: Amtrak Announces Order for complete replacement of 20 Acela Express trainsets

Posted by Olog-hai on Thu Dec 13 22:12:05 2012, in response to Amtrak Announces Order for complete replacement of 20 Acela Express trainsets, posted by Olog-hai on Thu Dec 13 21:38:10 2012.

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Amtrak Plans to Replace All High-Speed Acela Trains

By Angela Greiling Keane on December 13, 2012

The announcement by Amtrak, the U.S. intercity passenger railroad, that it will replace its fleet of Acela trains may create new competition for Bombardier Inc., supplier of equipment used since the service’s start.

“There’s not that many companies that build the trains,” said Andy Kunz, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association. “But the handful that there are would all be ready to bid.”

The 12-year-old Acela, which operates between Washington and Boston, is by far Amtrak’s fastest and most profitable service. It produced about a fourth of the taxpayer-supported railroad’s $2 billion in ticket revenue for the year ended Sept. 30. About 3.4 million passengers rode Acela trains during that period.

Amtrak’s decision to buy new trains comes as it develops long-range plans to offer service as fast as 220 miles per hour (354 kilometers per hour) in the Northeast, an effort it’s said will cost $151 billion. The railroad has doubled its share of air-rail travel between New York and Washington, to about 75 percent, since the Acela was introduced and airport security became more time-consuming after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Replacing the Acela fleet may be Amtrak’s biggest equipment purchase since it bought the original trains in a contract valued at $1.2 billion when signed in 1996. Amtrak doesn’t have a cost estimate because it’s at “the very beginning of this process,” Steve Kulm, a railroad spokesman, said.

Seven Years

Montreal-based Bombardier worked with Alstom SA (ALO), based in Levallois-Perret, France, to build the 20 Acela train sets that consist of locomotives integrated with passenger cars. “We would love to work with Amtrak on their next generation of trains,” Maryanne Roberts, a company spokeswoman, said in an e- mail yesterday.

Other companies that may be interested include Siemens AG (SIE), Patentes Talgo SA, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011), Hitachi Ltd. (6501) and Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles SA (CAF), according to Kunz and Tom Simpson, president of the Railway Supply Institute.

In announcing the fleet replacement yesterday, Amtrak said it scrapped a plan to buy 40 Acela passenger cars from Bombardier and lengthen each train set by two cars to increase capacity.

“What we really need to do is replace the Acela with new equipment,” Amtrak Chief Executive Officer Joseph Boardman told a congressional committee in Washington. “I told our folks they need to get this done by the time I’m 70, and I’ll be 64 next year.”

Higher Demand

The Washington-based railroad is already buying new equipment for its slower, long-distance train services, replacing cars made as long ago as the 1940s. In July 2010, it announced a $298.1 million contract for 130 passenger cars with the U.S. unit of CAF, based in Gipuzkoa, Spain. Three months later, it said it would spend $466 million on 70 new electric locomotives made by Siemens, based in Munich.

In a fleet plan issued in March, Amtrak estimated the lifespan of Acela trains to be 20 to 25 years.

“By the time they get to be replaced, they’ll be 18 to 20” years old, Kulm said. “It’s not that the equipment is wearing out; it’s that the demand has increased.”

The cost of replacing the Acela will be higher than the fleet’s original cost because of rail safety regulations imposed since 1996, Simpson said in an interview.

Those include higher standards for crashworthiness of passenger rail cars and a requirement for technology, known as positive train control, that can automatically stop a train before a collision.

Old Technology

Amtrak appears to have decided it’s cheaper to buy new trains than upgrade, said Kunz, of the Washington-based high speed rail group, whose members include Bombardier, Alstom, Siemens and Patentes Talgo.

The Acela is built with technology that dates back 15 years so it makes sense for Amtrak to look at newer options, David Gunn, Amtrak’s president from 2002 to 2005, said in an interview.

The Acela is heavier than bullet trains in Europe because it was built to stringent U.S. crash standards, he said. That’s necessary in part because U.S. passenger and freight trains share tracks, even on the Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor.

Because just two rail tunnels lead into New York’s Penn Station, the only way to get more passengers on the popular service is to add rail cars, and the Acela was built to operate at one length, Gunn said. Maintenance facilities in New York, Washington and Boston won’t accommodate longer trains, he said.

Too Expensive

“You can create a longer Acela, but it would create a bunch of additional problems,” Gunn said. “If you were going for new equipment, you wouldn’t just dust off the Acela.”

While Acela trains can run up to 150 miles per hour (241 kilometers per hour), the limitations of tracks and tunnels along most of the route dictate that they move more slowly. Seventeen are in operation on weekdays with trains leaving Washington and Boston, and New York in both directions, about hourly.

Amtrak abandoned its plan to buy passenger cars after its inspector general questioned the “high dollar value and Amtrak’s plan to award a sole-source contract,” according to a Dec. 4 report.

“They were too expensive,” Boardman said.

Toilet Traps

Amtrak has continued to work with Bombardier despite a series of mechanical and design failures in the early years of Acela service that embroiled the companies in litigation. Its start was delayed almost a year and twice, in 2002 and 2005, Amtrak parked the entire Acela fleet to fix cracks in brakes and shock absorbers.

Other defects included the passenger cars being four inches too wide to use tilting mechanisms that allow for higher speeds while rounding corners, and restroom doors that “frequently trapped passengers from exiting the toilet,” author Frank Wilner wrote in “Amtrak Past, Present, Future,” published this year.

Wilner has worked as a spokesman for the United Transportation Union and as chief of staff for the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which regulates rail rates and mergers.

Replacing the Acela rather than making the trains longer could delay getting additional capacity on the popular route, Ross Capon, president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, a Washington-based advocacy group, said in an interview.

“My concern is, when all is said and done, the additional capacity will be farther in the future,” Capon said. “I just wonder if it’s trying to put the best face on a bad situation.”

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